2024
Risk=Hazard+Outrage: Some Risk Communication Basics (and some COVID comments) – 2024 Edition
Class presented via Zoom to Prof. Michael Osterholm’s course on “Emerging Infectious Diseases: Current Issues, Policies and Controversies,” University of Minnesota School of Public Health, February 5, 2024
Prof. Mike Osterholm of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy periodically asks me to give a Zoom class on risk communication for his School of Public Health graduate course on “Emerging Infectious Diseases.” I previously posted the March 21, 2022 “edition.” You can access the video, audio, and slide set there.
This is the February 5, 2024 edition. The main difference is this time I got permission to include an audio of the 83-minute Q&A that followed my presentation. This Q&A pretty much ignored my hazard-versus-outrage basics and focused on what went wrong in COVID risk communication. The class reading assignment had included two of my pre-COVID articles on public health dishonesty (here and here), so there was discussion of that topic too. I recorded the Q&A on my phone, so my answers are clear but the students’ questions are barely audible.
Another difference: This time I'm also posting Zoom’s machine transcript of the presentation, for those who’d rather read than watch or listen.
The content of the Q&A is new, of course, but the presentation itself is mostly my trademark explanation of the distinction between hazard and outrage and the resulting paradigms of risk communication: precaution advocacy, outrage management, crisis communication, and public participation. Along the way and at the very end I commented on COVID implications of the various paradigms … a little of which did change between 2022 and 2024.
Link to the offsite Zoom file on Vimeo (66 min.) 
Link launches an on-site audio file of the presentation (92MB, 66 min.)
Link launches an onsite file with the PowerPoint slides (229 kB)
Link to an on-site file with a machine transcript of the presentation (60kB)
Link launches an on-site audio file (71MB, 81min.) of the Q&A following the presentation
The Zoom file is located off this site.
The other files are located on this site.This article is categorized as:
2023
Iowa Lecture: Hazard versus Outrage; Managing Controversy; Two Kinds of Reputation Management; Public Health’s Noble Lies
Class presented via Zoom to Prof. Joanna Krajewski’s online course on “Risk Communication,” University of Iowa, April 25, 2023
Dr. Joanna Krajewski teaches an online “Risk Communication” course as part of the Master of Arts in Strategic Communication at the University of Iowa – and features my approach in a major segment of the course. So when she asked me to give a guest lecture via Zoom, I couldn’t resist. On April 25, 2023 I spent 97 minutes with her class. She asked me not to focus too much on my hazard-versus-outrage distinction and my three paradigms of risk communication, since the class had already covered that – but I still started with an overview of these basics. The rest of the class covered: the three main ways to manage a controversy (support mobilization versus public relations versus outrage management); my claim that “good reputation” and “bad reputation” are different variables and being less hated is usually more useful than being more loved; and my critique of how public health professionals do risk communication, especially their frequent resort to altruistic dishonesty (“noble lies”). The presentation was wide-ranging and so was the Q&A at the end, but I spent more time talking about outrage management than anything else, so that’s where I’m indexing this video.
The Zoom file is located off this site.
The audio file is located on this site.This article is categorized as:
2022
COMMENTARY: Navigating COVID language traps
Posted on the website of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, August 30, 2022
On June 15, 2022, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Faye Flam emailed me that she was writing an article on “confusing or misleading terms or expressions surrounding Covid,” and invited me to weigh in. That started me off on what promised to be an endless catalog of what I decided to call “COVID Language Traps.” I sent Faye a longish response on June 20, parts of which she used in her June 29 column, “Fuzzy Language Is Setting Back the Fight Against Covid.”
I kept writing. I could be writing still, but after topping 11,000 words (in thirteen entries) I decided enough was enough. Then I pared the piece down to less than 5,000 words (in nine entries), which the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy agreed to publish (with some minor editorial changes). I posted the original version here. This link is to the abridged version I produced for CIDRAP, with entries on misinformation, mask, airborne, immunity, natural immunity, case, booster, emergency, and pandemic/endemic.
This is an Adobe Acrobat (95 kB pdf) file,
located on this site.
The same abridged article is also available on the CIDRAP website.This article is categorized as:
Sharing Dilemmas about Monkeypox Containment
Op-ed rejected by the New York Times, July 25, 2022 – and also rejected (with some editing) in the following week by four other mainstream U.S. newspapers
On July 25, 2022, infectious diseases expert Michael Osterholm sent the New York Times an op-ed he and I had written together about monkeypox messaging. The column listed eight monkeypox dilemmas we thought public health officials should be more honest about: allocating Jynneos, dose-sparing, the smallpox vaccine, TPOXX, sex, stigma, how little we know, and preparedness. The Times turned us down – as did four other mainstream newspapers in quick succession. It was clear they didn’t like what we had to say about sex and stigma. We thought public health officials should focus on gay men with multiple partners, prioritizing health over stigma. The editors thought saying so was itself stigmatizing. There has been some progress in the weeks since our op-ed was universally rejected; that progress is briefly discussed in my italics introduction.
The (rejected) op-ed by Michael T. Osterholm and Peter M. Sandman is located on this site.
This article is categorized as:
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Risk = Hazard + Outrage: Some Risk Communication Basics (and some COVID comments)
Class presented via Zoom to Prof. Michael Osterholm’s course on “Emerging Infectious Diseases: Current Issues, Policies and Controversies,” University of Minnesota School of Public Health, March 21, 2022.
Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy periodically asks me to give a Zoom class on risk communication for his School of Public Health course on emerging infectious diseases. The most recent one on March 21, 2022 was recorded (except for the wonderful Q&A) – so here it is.
It’s mostly my trademark presentation on the distinction between hazard and outrage and the resulting paradigms of risk communication: precaution advocacy, outrage management, crisis communication, and public participation (stakeholder consultation). Along the way and at the very end I commented briefly on COVID risk communication.
Link to the offsite Zoom file on Vimeo (56 min.)Link launches an on-site audio file (55.6MB, 56 min.)Link launches an onsite file with the PowerPoint slides (229 kB)
The Zoom file is located off this site.
The audio file and the PowerPoint slides are located on this site.This article is categorized as:
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Risk = Hazard + Outrage: Three Paradigms of (Radiation) Risk Communication
Webinar presented via Zoom to the “Web Symposium on Risk Communication in Radiation Disaster,” Fukushima Medical University, February 7, 2022 (presentation prerecorded on December 16, 2021)
This is my basic introduction to risk communication, focusing on the distinction between hazard and outrage and the three paradigms of risk communication resulting from that distinction – plus a fourth paradigm, stakeholder consultation when hazard and outrage are both intermediate. The occasional references to radiation-specific issues are brief, as is the Q&A at the end. I do like the slides on radiation-related uses for each paradigm. Also, the video is higher-quality technically than the other Zoom videos I have posted. Since the symposium sponsor has posted the video on YouTube, I’m linking to it there instead of uploading it to Vimeo as usual.
Link to the offsite Zoom file on YouTube (1 hr. 4 min.)
Link launches an on-site audio file (88.7MB, 1 hr. 4 min.)Link opens the webinar slide set on this site (2.6 MB, 21 slides)
The Zoom file is located off this site.
The audio file and the PowerPoint slides are located on this site.This article is categorized as:
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Presentation via Zoom to the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, January 11, 2022
This 80-minute presentation addresses eight COVID risk communication mistakes that I believe are undermining public trust in public health: overconfidence and failure to proclaim uncertainty; failure to do anticipatory guidance; fake consensus; prioritizing health over all other goods; prioritizing health over truth; failure to own your mistakes; failure to address misinformation credibly and empathetically; and politicization.
To listen to specific segments:
- 1. Overconfidence and failure to proclaim uncertainty (11:22)
- 2. Failure to do anticipatory guidance (18:29)
- 3. Fake consensus (25:26)
- 4. Prioritizing health over all other goods (33:13)
- 5. Prioritizing health over truth (42:55)
- 6. Failure to own your mistakes (53:40)
- 7. Failure to address misinformation credibly and empathetically (59:13)
- 8. Politicization (1:14:28)
The presentation got its start as a November 15, 2021 Teams presentation to the Minnesota Department of Health. That was revised into a December 10, 2021 commentary for the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), available both on the CIDRAP website and on this website
. I revised it some more for the CSTE presentation. An additional hour of discussion was not taped.This is an audio MP3 file, 110MB, 1 hr. 20 min., located on this site.
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2021
COMMENTARY: 8 things US pandemic communicators still get wrong
Posted on the website of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, December 10, 2021
On November 15, I gave a Zoom presentation to the Minnesota Department of Health on COVID risk communication mistakes that I believe are undermining trust in U.S. public health agencies. With the department’s permission, I revised the presentation into a “commentary” article for CIDRAP. The article covers eight mistakes: (1) Overconfidence and failure to proclaim uncertainty; (2) Failure to do anticipatory guidance; (3) Fake consensus; (4) Prioritizing health over other values; (5) Prioritizing health over truth; (6) Failure to own your mistakes; (7) Failure to address misinformation credibly and empathetically; and (8) Politicization. These are all points about public health risk communication that I have made before – some of them for decades – but seldom for audiences as big as CIDRAP’s. The link above is to CIDRAP’s PDF
on this site; CIDRAP’s website post is also available at the CIDRAP site.This is an Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file,
404 kB, located this site.
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Risk = Hazard + Outrage: Three Paradigms of (Wildfire) Risk Communication
Webinar presented via Zoom, hosted by the European Forest Institute, November 15, 2021
In July 2021, the European Forest Institute started putting together a risk communication course, to be offered in November for wildfire management doctoral students throughout Europe (and a few from elsewhere). I agreed to give the November 15 keynote (via Zoom). At EFI’s request, I kept the keynote generic. Applying my principles to wildfire risk communication challenges would be the students’ task, I was told, not mine. So only the last minute or two of my 45-minute presentation has anything to do with wildfires, plus the 25-minute Q&A that followed.
The presentation itself focuses on the hazard-versus-outrage distinction and the three risk communication paradigms that follow from that distinction – plus a fourth paradigm I don’t always talk about, public consultation when both hazard and outrage are intermediate. I didn’t break any new ground here, but this is a pretty good, pretty short introduction to the basics of my approach. And I think the 25-minute Q&A is excellent.
Link launches an on-site audio file (98 MB, 1 hr. 11 min.)Link opens the webinar slide set on this site (2.6 MB, 21 slides)The audio file and slide set are located on this site.
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Since the CDC’s mid-May guidance on wearing masks, we’re no longer all in this together
Posted on the STAT News website, July 16, 2021
Shortly after CDC issued its bombshell mid-May announcement that vaccinated people could safely take off their masks even indoors, Maggie Fox of CNN asked me if I wanted to write an op-ed on the resulting controversy. I did, and Maggie sent it to CNN’s opinion editors, but they didn’t take it. More than a month later, Faye Flam of Bloomberg News asked me if I wanted to write an op-ed on the same topic, updated to account for the Delta variant and other developments. I did, but what I wrote turned out too similar to a piece Faye herself was writing, so with my permission she sent it to STAT instead. STAT suggested revisions that improved it significantly, then published it. Through its three incarnations, the article’s main thesis didn’t change: Thanks to COVID-19 vaccines, we’re no longer all in this together. But by mid-July I had to add that “thanks” to Delta, we’re a bit more in this together again than we were in May.
This file is located off this site.
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Three Paradigms of Risk Communication – and a critique of COVID-19 Crisis Communication
In April 2021, the University of Liverpool Institute for Risk and Uncertainty asked me to give a presentation in its monthly webinar series. We agreed I would divide my time between my “signature risk communication formula” and my criticisms of the way COVID-19 has been communicated. And on July 7 that’s what I did. The first third of this 94-minute webinar is introductory, my “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” formula and the three risk communication paradigms I derive from the formula. The second third is my critique of COVID-19 crisis communication, mostly in the U.S. The final third is Q&A and discussion, much of it focusing on COVID-19 risk communication dilemmas in the U.K.
My hosts promptly posted the webinar on YouTube, as they always do. That link is below. Also below is an audio-only recording of the webinar and my slide set, so you’re free to follow along on your own if you prefer.
Pesticide Outrage Management – Parts 1 and 2
Webinar presented via Zoom to the Region One Pesticide Inspector Regional Training (PIRT) program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, February 23, 2021
I came out of retirement in January 2020 to try to help with the COVID pandemic. I wasn’t interested in any other work. But in early 2021, I was asked to do a two-hour Zoom training seminar for pesticide managers on how to cope with pesticide safety controversies. I thought it would be a nice change of pace from the pandemic, so I said yes.
Part 1, 56 minutes long, is devoted mostly to the basics of risk communication: the distinction between hazard and outrage and the three paradigms of risk communication resulting from that distinction. Toward the end I focus on the paradigm most relevant to pesticide controversies, outrage management – beginning with some thoughts on how to stay empathetic in high-stress situations. Part 2 (65 minutes) includes more on outrage management and some Q&A on pesticide outrage management in particular.
The training was sponsored by the Region One Pesticide Inspector Regional Training (PIRT) program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It was organized and hosted by the Pesticide Management Program of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Link to the off-site Zoom Part 1 file on Vimeo (57 min.)
Link to the off-site Zoom Part 2 file on Vimeo (65 min.)Link launches the Part 1 on-site audio file (79.6 MB, 57 min.) Link launches the Part 2 on-site audio file (92 MB, 65 min.) Link is to an on-site file with the PowerPoint slides for both parts
The Zoom files are located off this site.
The audio file and the PowerPoint slides are located on this site.This article is categorized as:
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Interview with Peter M. Sandman by Richard Levick, January 13, 2021 (part of Richard Levick’s “In House Warrior” podcast series, released January 20, 2021)
Richard Levick runs a crisis communication consulting firm, and churns out an incredible number of podcasts, including the daily “In House Warrior” series for Corporate Counsel Business Journal. Our 38-minute conversation covered some generic topics, starting with my three paradigms of risk communication and ending with my views on whether corporations should take stands on controversies. In the middle we focused on vaccine communication: what to do about vaccination hesitation; bandwagoning versus finger-wagging; what company COVID-19 vaccination policies should be; the politicization of masks and vaccines; key messages in this dark pandemic winter; etc.
This is an audio MP3 file, 34.5MB, 37:46 min., located on this site.
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2020
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COVID-19 from Frozen Fish: Fascinoma or Serious Risk?
Posted on this site in English, and on Weibo and WeChat in Mandarin, October 22, 2020
This is the first article I’ve ever written to be published first in China (in Mandarin). Andre Shen, CEO of the Chinese public relations consultancy Bridge Consulting, has been translating some of my COVID-19 risk communication articles into Mandarin and posting them on Chinese social media platforms Weibo and WeChat. On October 20, he sent me an email asking me to write a short article on an emerging Chinese COVID-19 issue: the possibility that imported frozen fish might be a SARS-CoV-2 transmission source. The risk communication questions here are generic: Should authorities go public about a small risk that’s likely to lead to a big overreaction? And if they do go public, how can they minimize the overreaction? Andre translated the article and posted it. I’m posting it on this website in English.
This file is located on this site in English.
This file is located off this site in Mandarin.This article is categorized as:
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COMMENTARY: Public health’s share of the blame: US COVID-19 risk communication failures
Posted on the website of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, August 24, 2020
On August 4, I posted a column on this website entitled “Public Health’s Single Biggest COVID-19 Risk Communication Failure.” It told the story of how public health professionals drastically underreacted to COVID-19 at first and left us unprepared, then overreacted and sent us into lockdown, and then justified the lockdown by switching from a “flatten the curve” narrative to a “prevent infections at all costs” narrative instead of teaching us to balance priorities and “dance” with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. After digesting some comments from public health officials and others, I produced this new version for CIDRAP – which gets orders of magnitude more readers than my website. It’s shorter than the original and has a lot of new content, though it makes the same main points. The link above is to CIDRAP’s PDF on this site; CIDRAP’s website post is also available at their site.
This PDF file,
155kB, is located on this site.This article is categorized as:
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Peter Sandman: How Your Ability To Process Risk Can Save Your Life
Interview with Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity, podcast posted July 7, 2020
Chris Martenson’s “Peak Prosperity” YouTube channel currently claims 368,000 subscribers. Chris is best known for his “Crash Course” on how pretty much everything is in rapid decline. In 2020, not surprisingly, he has posted dozens of videos on COVID-19. One of these, posted in March, was devoted entirely to my 2005 article on the adjustment reaction concept. Entitled “Coronavirus: How To Inform Your Friends & Family Without Creating Pushback,”
it got 330,000 views and 4,428 comments in three months – way out of my league. So when Chris said he wanted to interview me via Zoom for an hour-long podcast, I said yes. We did it on June 29. Chris wanted to talk (again!) about adjustment reactions. I wanted to talk (again) about the basics of risk communication. We both wanted to talk about the ways the U.S. is mismanaging the COVID-19 pandemic. So we did all three. Our COVID-19 discussion focused mostly on a risk communication analysis, but we inevitably veered into risk management and epidemiology as well.
Link launches an audio file on this site. (86kB, 61 min.) Link off-site to Peak Prosperity site with the video of this interview.
Link off-site to the same Peak Prosperity site with a complete rough transcript.The video interview and transcript are located off this site.
The audio verison is located on this site.This article is categorized as:
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Why So Much COVID-19 Crisis Communication Has Failed: An Expert Explains
Email responses by Peter M. Sandman to questions posed by Eric Lebowitz of Critical Mention, posted verbatim as a Critical Mention “eBook,” July 1, 2020
Jody Lanard and I posted an article on “Effective COVID-19 Crisis Communication”
on May 6, 2020. On May 12, Eric Lebowitz of Critical Mention emailed me three follow-up questions, focusing on why the crisis communication principles Jody and I had emphasized were so seldom followed. The answers I sent him on June 5 covered some familiar ground with new COVID-19 examples, including the case for admitting mistakes instead of trying to hide them. But I also included information on two topics I hadn’t written about in so much detail previously: arguments I used to use when trying to convince my consulting clients to avoid over-reassurance and overconfidence; and why traditional public relations paradigms make PR people bad crisis communicators unless they have reoriented their approach. Critical Mention reformatted my answers as a short “eBook” for their clients, with permission to post the eBook on this website as well.This PDF file,
455kB, is located on this site.This article is categorized as:
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Effective COVID-19 Crisis Communication
Posted on the website of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, May 6, 2020
In late April 2020, some three months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy decided to produce a series of reports under the collective title “COVID-19: The CIDRAP Viewpoint.” CIDRAP head Michael Osterholm asked Jody and me to write the second entry in the series, on COVID-19 crisis communication. We focused on six crisis communication basics: Don’t over-reassure; proclaim uncertainty; validate emotions; give people things to do; admit and apologize for errors; and share dilemmas. Throughout the report, we emphasized the most glaring problem of COVID-19 communication in the U.S. so far – nurturing the dangerous myth that COVID-19 will be a one-peak pandemic that's about halfway over already. We also stressed that crisis communication is a field of study and practice and it’s past time for officials and experts to learn the basics.
This is an Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file,
3.8MB, located on this site.This article is categorized as:
Note:In 2015, I stopped writing articles for other publications, largely because publishers so often objected to simultaneous publication on this website. I decided to do all my writing exclusively for the website, while also providing content to journalists writing for other publications via emails and phone interviews. So the above is my first entry in “Web-Available Articles by Peter M. Sandman” since 2015. Mike Osterholm is an old friend, and CIDRAP agreed to simultaneous publication.
2019–2016
(There were no articles written for the web during 2016 through 2019.)
2015
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Radical Candor: Making “Clean Coal” More than an Oxymoron
Public Utilities Fortnightly, March 2015, pp. 16–23
The editor of Public Utilities Fortnightly invited me to write an article – no pay, but any utilities-related topic I wanted, at any length I wanted, with the final edit up to me, and with the okay to post the final product on my website as soon as it came out. I decided to take the opportunity to write about “clean coal” communication – focusing on how the coal industry has oversold the prospects of carbon capture and storage (CCS), thereby turning what might (or might not) be an important piece of the answer to global climate change into an oxymoron and a laugh line. I didn’t find any smoking guns, just garden-variety hype. But for a variety of reasons, hype from the coal industry backfires much more badly than hype from (for example) the solar or wind power industries. The last half of the article outlines a set of CCS messages embodying a strategy of “radical candor.” I argue that it will take something approaching radical candor for the coal industry to earn a second look from the key audience: “attentives” who are skeptical about CCS and anything to do with coal, but not unalterably hostile.
This is an Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file,
8.8 kB, located on this site.This article is categorized as:
2014
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COMMENTARY: When the Next Shoe Drops – Ebola Crisis Communication Lessons from October
Posted on the website of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, December 9, 2014
For more than a month the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) and its director, Mike Osterholm, urged me to write a CIDRAP commentary on crisis communication lessons from the U.S. bout with Ebola in October 2014. I hesitated – partly because it wasn’t much of a crisis, partly because it was over and I was tired of writing about it, and partly because I doubted CIDRAP’s principal audience of public health professionals wanted to hear my complaints about how they handled it (especially their uncivil response to the quarantine controversy). But in early December I decided to go ahead, jointly with my wife and colleague Jody Lanard. The resulting article focuses on four main crisis communication errors: over-reassurance; over-confidence and even absolutism instead of acknowledging uncertainties about Ebola science; misdiagnosing the public as panicking; and ridiculing the public’s Ebola fears instead of accepting and guiding them.
This file is located off this site.
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2013
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The San Onofre Controversy: What Should Southern California Edison Do?
Guest column (part one), “energybiz” website, May 30, 2013
The San Onofre Controversy: What Should We Criticize … and What Should We Praise?
Guest column (part two), “energybiz” website, June 2, 2013
On May 16, 2013, Ken Silverstein interviewed me by telephone about a controversy regarding the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Had the plant’s owner, Southern California Edison, been warned in advance about a possible steam generator problem? If so, should the company have redesigned the system, and should it have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission? And later, when the problem materialized, led to radiation leaks, and forced the plant to shut down, did it lie about whether it had been warned? I later followed up with an email, focusing on the case against keeping secrets. Both Ken’s May 17 Forbes story and my email are online.
On May 29, Ken sent me a link to a follow-up story he had posted on the “energybiz” website, and asked for further comment. When he read the email I sent in return, he requested my okay to post it on “energybiz” as a two-part guest column. Part one considers what sort of risk communication Southern California Edison should be doing to address the issue, and whether it is a “crisis” or merely a “controversy.” Part two argues that while the company may deserve criticism for how it handled the steam generator warning, we shouldn’t criticize any company merely for having “warnings in its files about possible problems it decided not to fix.” A reader's comment on Part two provoked me to add a comment of my own, addressing the “near miss paradox”: whether near misses should be seen as evidence of safety or of danger.
The “energybiz” and Forbes articles are located off this site.
The May 16 email is located on this site.These articles are categorized as:
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Atomic Show #205 – Peter Sandman teaches nuclear communicators (Note: Link goes off-site to a page with this 102-min. audio)Podcast for the “Atomic Insights” website, May 31, 2013 (with Rod Adams, Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin, and Suzy Hobbs-Baker)
Rod Adams runs a website called “Atomic Insights” that promotes nuclear power. In early May 2013 he discovered my approach to outrage management, and put posts on his own website and on an American Nuclear Society website urging nuclear power proponents to learn outrage management. The responses to his two posts led Rod to invite me to do this podcast.
The podcast itself runs 1 hour and 42 minutes. Most of it is a basic introduction to risk communication and then to outrage management: the hazard-versus-outrage distinction, the components of outrage, the three paradigms of risk communication, the key strategies of outrage management, etc. But I did try to focus especially on what the nuclear power industry and its supporters get wrong – for example, imagining that their core communication mistake is failing to sell their strengths effectively, whereas I believe it is failing to acknowledge their problems candidly. There are recommendations for nuclear communication throughout the podcast, and a Q&A at the end with Rod and fellow proponents Margaret Harding, Meredith Angwin, and Suzy Hobbs-Baker. The plan is to follow up with a second podcast, a more narrowly focused roundtable discussion among the five of us on nuclear power outrage management.
Link off-site to a page with this 102-min. audio.
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Presented via telephone at a conference on “Freedom in Biological Research: How to Consider Accidental or Intentional Risks for Populations,” Fondation Mérieux and Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Veyrier-du-lac, France, February 8, 2013
The controversy over whether scientists should be allowed to bioengineer potentially pandemic bird flu viruses had pretty much died down by the time I was asked to speak at a February 2013 conference on the issue in France. Since I had criticized the controversy’s consistently miserable risk communication, I was delighted that at least one post mortem conference wanted a risk communication perspective. But I had prior commitments and couldn’t go. When the organizers invited me to present by telephone instead, I jumped at the chance. My speech notes are more extensive than I had time for in the actual presentation. On the other hand, the MP3 recording of the actual presentation includes about 25 minutes of Q&A. My presentation was mostly borrowed from my previous articles and Guestbook entries on the controversy, all of which are listed and linked at the end of the notes.
These files are located on this site.
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2012
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Talking to the Public about H5N1 Biotech Research (original longer version)
Submitted to Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, March 18, 2012
Talking to the Public about H5N1 Biotech Research
(accepted shorter version)Published in Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, April 15, 2012
The H5N1 (“bird flu”) virus is incredibly deadly to humans, but almost never transmits from human to human – at least until late 2011, when two teams of scientists bioengineered H5N1 to make it transmissible in mammals. Now a battle rages over whether the two papers detailing this work should be published, and whether the work itself should continue – and whether the concerns of the general public should be considered in making these decisions. When I was quoted in Nature urging proponents to dialogue with critics rather than merely trying to “educate” them, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News asked me to write a brief opinion piece expanding on my view. Both the short version accepted for publication and a somewhat longer version (with a little more background on the controversy) I submitted at the same time are posted on this site.
These files are located on this site.
This article is categorized as:
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Flu Vaccination of Healthcare Workers: Two Risk Communication Issues
Comments on draft recommendations
of the Healthcare Personnel Influenza Vaccination Subgroup, National Vaccine Program Office, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, submitted January 14, 2012The public health establishment in the U.S. is pushing hard for mandatory flu vaccination of healthcare workers (HCWs), chiefly on the grounds that vaccinated HCWs are less likely to give patients the flu. A committee of the National Vaccine Program Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued draft recommendations
that included mandatory vaccination if organizations fail to vaccinate at least 90% of HCWs voluntarily. Comments on the draft were solicited, so on January 14, 2012 my wife and colleague Jody Lanard and I submitted some. We focused on two risk communication issues: the dangers of overstating flu vaccination benefits, and the dangers of requiring reluctant HCWs to get vaccinated. This file is located on this site.
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2011
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Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication: Alerting, Reassuring, Guiding
Presented to the National Public Health Information Coalition, Miami Beach FL, October 21, 2009
Although this six-hour seminar was entitled “Three Paradigms of Radiological Risk Communication,” NPHIC asked me to go easy on the “radiological” part and give participants a broad introduction to my approach to risk communication, mentioning radiation issues from time to time. So that’s what I did.
Fair warning: These are not professional videos. NPHIC member Joe Rebele put a camera in the back of the room and let it run. You won’t lose much listening to the MP3 audio files on this site instead.
- Part 1 (90-min.)
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Part One is a introduction to the hazard-versus-outrage distinction and the three paradigms of risk communication.
- Part Two (155 min)
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Part Two discusses the seesaw and other risk communication games (thus completing the introductory segment), then spends a little over an hour each on some key strategies of precaution advocacy and outrage management.
- Part Three (72-min.)
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Part Three is a rundown on some key crisis communication strategies.
This article is categorized as:
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Trust the Public with More of the Truth: What I Learned in 40 Years of Risk Communication
Written speechAudio (they’re pretty different)
(Note: This link launches an MP3 file (62MB; 1 hr 6 min.) on this site.)Link off-site to the video
(Note: This link goes to a page off-site with a link to this video file.)The National Public Health Information Coalition is an organization of federal, state, and local health department communicators. NPHIC asked me to give its 2009 “Berreth Lecture” at its annual conference in Miami Beach – and specified that the presentation should be about myself and my career, not the substance of risk communication. But as I walked the group through my 40 years in risk communication, a substantive theme emerged: that public health communicators are at least as untrustworthy as corporate communicators, that nobody has the courage to trust the public with those parts of the truth that conflict with the message, and that public health agencies need to learn how to cope better with mistrust and outrage. I illustrated my thesis with a lot of flu and other infectious diseases examples. I had written the speech out in advance – something I almost never do – but I departed from my text more than a little, so both versions are here.
The written speech file is located on this site.
The audio file is located on this site.
The video file is located off this site. -
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